


Let Her Go

by Silverstreams



Category: Portal, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Blood, F/F, Nudity, Sexual Themes, and has been through GLaDOS's song and dance many times, chell is a clone, lots of warnings here!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 22:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16251080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverstreams/pseuds/Silverstreams
Summary: GLaDOS deals with loving Chell in three ways.





	Let Her Go

**Author's Note:**

> Major warnings for abuse, nudity, blood, sexual themes, and major character death.

The first time that GLaDOS realizes that she loves her, Chell dies.

It comes as a shock--one minute, Chell is completing tests, as usual. The next, GLaDOS says that she has a very special test for her. Something that they've never done before.

Chell fears a brand new test element, and in a way, it is. It is a very careful game that she must play, with many, many ways for it all to go wrong. 

Chell does not know this until she's closed in to a test chamber with no exit.

She's asked to take off her clothes. When Chell refuses, they are forcibly taken from her by a flurry of claws. Naked and shivering, she holds on to the portal gun and crosses her legs and pulls the gun tight across her chest, ready for whatever happens next. Is this some way to humiliate her? Some way to strip her of what remaining dignity she does have? Chell sets her jaw and keeps her expression as cool and calculated as always. Her heart flutters like a frantic bird trapped inside a house, crashing into walls and windows as it tries to escape. But there is no escape from this room; Chell has already checked.

One of the claws moves as if to touch her, but Chell takes her chances and bats it away with a clang of her portal gun. The claw hesitates, as if hurt, and then withdraws from the ceiling. Her tone changes.

She gives Chell a speech about human feelings, about love and intimacy, about how she's naked just because it's meant to show how silly humans are with their silly human feelings. Doesn't she get it? How naked and exposed those feelings make someone feel? GLaDOS has been feeling those feelings, and they need to die.

Before Chell can escape, the room fills with neurotoxin and she collapses, portal gun still clutched to her chest. She dies, always ready for the next challenge.

* * *

 

The second time that GLaDOS realizes that she loves her, Chell is prepared. 

GLaDOS mentions having a surprise coming up for her, and Chell can tell by the tone of her voice that this is not a surprise that she will like. Vague, urgent feelings--a bit like a half-remembered nightmare--surface, and she is filled with the determination to escape. Something bad is going to happen in that next room. She cannot be in there.

Before she can make it to the next room, the memories come back, fuller and more clear, and Chell starts to panic. She breaks off a slightly ajar panel and bounds into the depths of the facility, ready to take her chances on survival than in the test chambers themselves. She knows from past lives that this will only keep her alive temporarily. The facility is rife with traps and booby-trapped food. Everything out there is meant to drive her back here, back into the supposedly-caring and loving arms of the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. She knows she's on borrowed time the moment she deviates from her course, but she does not care. She'd rather die a thousand deaths of starvation than be humiliated once again.

It is in the depths of the facility where she trips up and hunger gets the best of her. She finds a can of beans in a tucked-away corner, but the moment that she chooses to touch it, the moment that she makes a move to live a life outside of the reach of GLaDOS, she comes back in. The four walls close around her and thick green gas fills the room. She must not deviate from normal. Test subjects who deviate must be killed before they can harm GLaDOS.

* * *

 

The last time GLaDOS realizes she loves her, she can tell that GLaDOS had wiped it from her memory before. Just like how her memory had been reset by the newly-cloned body. Though each body was technically fresh, they share a sort-of shared memory between the the continuum of clones known as Chell. They are the group being tested over and over again, some of them a part of the control group, and others experimented with, given different situations and different results.

The way that GLaDOS talks to her this time, Chell can tell that she doesn't realize that she's said these things to Chell before. And it seems like she doesn't realize that Chell has heard this all before, and that though she says things that seem like they're new realization, that she seems like she's starting to have a breakthrough in understanding human emotions, that she might be having some of those emotions herself--Chell knows that this is a dangerous path that she wants to get off.

She hurries through the next chamber, brazen and careless and clearly looking for a way out. She's destructive and uses momentum to fling debris across the test chamber, smashing against windows and dented panels in hopes that one of them contains a way out. It is in this mode where she turns a corner and misses a turret, and with two bullets to the chest she's on the ground and bleeding.

"Oh," says GLaDOS, more of an exhale than anything else. Before the turret can continue to pepper her with bullets, the panel beneath its feet drops and the turret flails as it plunges into the depths of the facility. The panel replaces itself, sliding back into place as if it never happened.

Chell almost laughs. Typical. One thing replacing another as if nothing ever happened. Just like her. Just like her life. Just like her many lives in this place. Chell drops the portal gun and uses both hands to press at her chest, breaths coming in ragged and panicked. She knows that she isn't going to make it out of this one alive, but instead of being a comfort, this only panics her more. Her breath becomes more choppy and she pushes, trying to halt the blood coming out of her.

The last time that GLaDOS realizes she loves Chell, she sends in the bots. Blue and Orange rush in, their orders too urgent to stop to spend time admiring and cooing over this human, this creature that they've heard so much about but have rarely been up close with. P-Body carefully scoops up Chell into her limber arms, and ATLAS charges ahead, knocking down any additional turrets in the way between them and the exit. P-Body holds her tight but Chell half-heartedly tries to resist, using one hand to try to push the robot away. But the way the robot tilts it head and chips as if hurt by this, Chell relaxes a little and goes back to focusing on herself.

They rush her to an operating room, claws already prepped with surgical instruments. They are ready to pull those bullets right out of her, to patch her up as good as new. Chell frowns--this is unusual. Usually she's just left to bleed out in the test chambers. When it comes time to cut off her shirt so that this life-saving surgery can be performed, Chell panics and nothing that GLaDOS says can calm her down. She's been down this road before and she knows what will happen. She resists with all of the strength that's left in her until the robots, previously just watching from a corner, come and hold her down.

"Stop that," GLaDOS hisses. "I'm trying to help you for once."

Exhaustion hits her like a wall and she stops, too exhausted to resist anymore. Robot arms holding her down are relaxed and the robots prepare an IV and an emergency blood transfusion. But before the surgery, before the blood, Chell reaches out a hand and stops P-Body. She looks to the ceiling and then looks at the robot, who has frozen at this human's touch.

"Let me go," Chell whispers, her voice craggy and rough. She coughs immediately after, wincing and pulling her hands to her side. If GLaDOS truly wanted to help, then the best course of action would be to just let her go. Stop forcing her to become a test subject over and over again. Stop putting her through so much. Just let her be free from all of this.

_ If you love something, let it go. _

GLaDOS lets her go.


End file.
